Best Practices for Layout and Document Design

[Knaight]

I'm currently working on a homebrew RPG which is looking like it's going to end up in the 20,000-25,000 word range (though I've made length estimates on this thing before and they've been low - point is, medium length). There's still writing and editing to do, but those are at least familiar tasks that I know how to approach.

This brings me to layout and document design. Put simply: I know the extreme basics and not much else - I've written a lot of essays and essay like documents, some of which had all the stylistic embellishments of headings, and even subheadings. Illustration placement? I know basically nothing about it, at least not beyond guesswork based on tables and figures in scientific and engineering papers. Effective use of whitespace? I've put whitespace on either side of headings, and I guess I've used it on the occasional title page. Decorative page embellishments? I know they exist. I've liked other people's. I have no idea how to properly use them.

So. What are these best practices? What have people noticed here, in terms of both good and bad design work? Heck, what sort of layout software should I be looking into?

[EggKookoo]

Regarding headings, illustrations, and the use of white space -- honestly there's no science to that. I worked in design (including print design) for over two decades before moving into more of a developer role. A lot of it is just convention and eyeballing, and there are trends and fashion. In the end formatting is largely to provide visual landmarks so the reader can maintain a high level of orientation on the page. If you have no eye for that yourself, the best thing is to put something together and show it to people for feedback. Either friends or even a place like this forum. You'll get more useful feedback if people can comment on specifics.

About layout software, I'm not sure what's out there for the budget-conscious. A lot of professional stuff is done with Adobe software but I'm sure there are alternatives.

[RedWarlock]

Chris covered a lot of the basics.

Re: Design software, InDesign is pretty standard, but you can get about 80% of the same features by just using custom styles in Word or OpenOffice Writer and some nice fonts. I put together an Eberron-clone style set myself about 10-12 years ago for my campaign bible/extended homebrew, just using OpenOffice.

[dboxcar]

If you need a software and like the general style of D&D 5e, the Homebrewery (http://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/) might be a convenient tool. It might take a little while to get used to using it (it's more finicky than Word by a long shot), but once you get use to it it's great for really clean-looking documents, and it's free as long as you give credit where credit is due when publishing. There's a little guide (https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/HJWLQsTwUZ)to get you started too.

[nineGardens]

So... I don't know about how to make the document pretty exactly but... when building my RPG, I wrote it up in the software Latex (I used the site "Overleaf" which gives online editing, along with several templates, including "D&D" templates).

Its a little heavy to use, but as long as you have used html or any form of computer coding before it shouldn't be too bad.
The main advantages is it makes getting a CONSISTENT feel across your document VERY easy. And if you want to tinker with or change details of that look and feel, this can be applied to the whole document (If for example, I wanted to change the icons on my character sheets, I change them in one place, and this propagates throughout the entire document.)
... that said the learning curve is a little steep, I'd be happy to give advice if you do go that way, but honestly, jumping into Latex just for this project probably is not worth your while.



As far as general formatting stuff is concerned, I'd probably advise thinking about HOW you expect people to read it.
Commercial RPGs often have lavish full color rule books, with "scroll" backgrounds on every page, and gold rimmed text etc.
The design decisions appropriate for this presumably differ from lower budget set ups.

Alternatively, you might either assume that people are reading on their computer, or that they are printing things out, and then viewing them on paper.

If you expect people to print stuff out, then that will have different effects to if they are reading onscreen (For onscreen, I'd up the font size a bit, and have no qualms with having white space, potentially even going for a "One concept per page" slideshow like feel. For on paper, I want to minimise the amount of printing people do, and avoid having too much page turning.

There is a blend of these two where you have a small number of pages that you expect your readers to print, and a larger number that are used less often, that they do not print.


The trick with rulebooks of this scale is that they need to contain information on the scale of a technical manual... but you don't want people to FEEL like they are reading a technical manual.
I know the Pathfinder often avoids this problem by having cute pictures tossed all around the place. World of Darkness has "Stories" between each chapter if I remember correctly, and also uses copious in universe "Examples"... which are also stories.


I would say that you should decide if you are going to use bold, italic etc in any special way. For example, World of Darkness does all its examples in italics.


I would also suspect that you want to look for one or two things to make your document look/feel distinctive. Fiasco goes with TONNES of white space, and super casual (and even just outright swearing) language. Honey Heist puts the entire rules on one sheet. I'm not sure how important this is, but potentially something as simple as using a particular font for your headings could be enough.


... and now I've rambled enough, because honestly, I know nothing about graphic design, so you shouldn't take anything I say very seriously.

[Grim Reader]

I've tried to use Homebrewery, but I am too old to learn HTML. I have done some things in Word that may be useful as templates if you are interested.

[EggKookoo]

I mean I can offer some basic good practice tips for layout if that helps.


You should strive for clarity first. You can add style -- which is really just a pattern of design elements and formatting choices -- afterward to add a kind of uniqueness to the work.
Don't go nuts with fonts. Use one basic easy-to-read font for most of your stuff. Even section headers should really be the same font, maybe just bigger and bolder. You can have fun with more artsy fonts for chapter headers and such. A little of that goes a long way.
Don't overdesign. Make it as simple and boring (but clear) as possible first, then add things in a later pass.
Don't sweat the details under the assumption that your readers will notice. They probably won't. Details matter, of course, but always in the service of clarity. In the end, content is what matters most.
Depending on your own tastes, you may find yourself designing more "densely" than necessary. Open things up a bit. Add white space, increase the line spacing just a bit. Add a little more space above section headers. Maybe even increase the font size a touch. You're approaching this work inside-out (you have the content, you're working to present it). Your readers are approaching it outside-in (they encounter your presentation first and have to work to get the content). Try to read your own stuff as if it's new to you. Not easy to do, which is why a lot of people try to get feedback from others.

This also goes toward how you break down your content. Try to imagine someone reading about RPGs for the first time. What questions would they have? What information is too complex to absorb too soon? To see an example of how not to do this, dig up a copy (or find one online if you can) of the old AD&D Player's Handbook and/or Dungeon Master's Guide for 1e. The content is all over the place. Later editions of D&D got this kind of thing much better.

About images, remember that one reason to have them at all is to serve as a kind of mnemonic. This is especially important if you're making a print book. People will often flip through the pages and take note if the imagery, at least to some degree. If they need to find something in the book later on, and they open it and see an image they saw before, it's easier for them to recognize if they're in the right section or not. Color coding chapters (maybe the page edges) can also be helpful.
Images are also very important in a rulebook for demonstrating various rules. They provide a kind of "this is what I mean by this" context for things, especially spells. Be wary, however, of trying to force a gameplay aesthetic on the players. D&D doesn't say exactly where a Magic Missile dart emanates from the caster (palm of hand? pointed finger? just pops into existence?), and that's probably a good thing. But if a spell or feature is complicated or hard to describe, an illustration of it might help.

The White Wolf games would make pretty good use of images (even if I found a lot of the aesthetic monotonous). In one of the books, the chapter on combat was accompanied by an almost comic-book-style beat-by-beat visualization of a fight.



I can keep going but like I said in my first post, it starts to get really theoretical until we can see what you've got. Then you'll get much more specific feedback. You may find what you do is just fine.

[Knaight]

I can throw what I have (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ah1pbXshNN8331ohsQEd1ui_OQ1OcXCCP0uhfNoZszw/edit?usp=sharing) in the thread, but it's very first pass. I'm planning on changing the font (maybe not on tables) at minimum, but to something Google Docs doesn't have, and there's still writing to do, pictures to insert (I found a decent collection in a consistent style in the public domain), etc.

I'll probably try loosening up the text though. I could see 1.5 spacing helping make it feel less dense, at minimum.

[EggKookoo]

Overall it's not bad. I'm not reading the content in detail so much as skimming and seeing if understand what I'm reading about. I don't know if Google docs limits you in this regard, but I do have a few suggestions.

Try to keep your tables on one page if possible. It makes it a little hard to reference things across page breaks.

Generally try to keep a section header in the same column as the first paragraph of its content. I know Word has a "keep with next paragraph" thing but I don't know if Google does that.

Actually, in general, if you can keep stuff from "leaking" over to a second page, just to have one or two sentences there, you should do that. You can do that by breaking up the content with an image, but be wary of having the image be the break to the next page. Move it up into the content enough so that the page or column break happens more into the meat of the copy, if that makes sense.

But yeah, while it could use some polish it actually is nice and clear. Nice opening image, too.

I guess I should actually try to read it in detail but your original question was more about presentation than content...

Edit:

I know you started this thread to talk about layout and presentation, but as I'm reading your rules in more detail it reminds me of an approach to a campaign that I never got to run, which in turn I kind of stole from the old White Wolf game Wraith: The Oblivion. I don't want to hijack the thread but if you're interested in talking about it, it might make it possible for you to have any number of players with your master/apprentice thing. It would change the gameplay a bit, and it would probably help if the players already had a little experience playing more standard games (although to be honest I think your game would mostly appeal to experienced players anyway). This is, of course, assuming you'd be interested in having more than two players in a given campaign.

[Knaight]

Overall it's not bad. I'm not reading the content in detail so much as skimming and seeing if understand what I'm reading about. I don't know if Google docs limits you in this regard, but I do have a few suggestions.

Try to keep your tables on one page if possible. It makes it a little hard to reference things across page breaks.

Generally try to keep a section header in the same column as the first paragraph of its content. I know Word has a "keep with next paragraph" thing but I don't know if Google does that.

Actually, in general, if you can keep stuff from "leaking" over to a second page, just to have one or two sentences there, you should do that. You can do that by breaking up the content with an image, but be wary of having the image be the break to the next page. Move it up into the content enough so that the page or column break happens more into the meat of the copy, if that makes sense.

But yeah, while it could use some polish it actually is nice and clear. Nice opening image, too.

I guess I should actually try to read it in detail but your original question was more about presentation than content...

I'm definitely planning on getting tables and sections sorted, and was thinking about using images to try and get that to happen - those were both just going to be done after getting the content finalized, and finding a different typeface (I'm thinking Palatino Linotype).

The image placement in the middle of the copy totally makes sense - I hadn't thought about it before, but now that I have I'm seeing enough benefits to want to go that way.